The Atlantic Monthly/Volume 1/Number 2/The Wind and Stream

by William Cullen Bryant

THE WIND AND STREAM.

A brook came stealing from the ground;
You scarcely saw its silvery gleam
Among the herbs that hung around
The borders of that winding stream,—
A pretty stream, a placid stream,
A softly gliding, bashful stream.

A breeze came wandering from the sky,
Light as the whispers of a dream;
He put the o'erhanging grasses by,
And gayly stooped to kiss the stream,—
The pretty stream, the flattered stream,
The shy, yet unreluctant stream.

The water, as the wind passed o'er,
Shot upward many a glancing beam,
Dimpled and quivered more and more,
And tripped along a livelier stream,—
The flattered stream, the simpering stream,
The fond, delighted, silly stream.

Away the airy wanderer flew
To where the fields with blossoms teem,
To sparkling springs and rivers blue,
And left alone that little stream,—
The flattered stream, the cheated stream,
The sad, forsaken, lonely stream.

That careless wind no more came back;
He wanders yet the fields, I deem;
But on its melancholy track
Complaining went that little stream,—
The cheated stream, the hopeless stream,
The ever murmuring, moaning stream.